Project One: The Grunge Era
I decided to kick off this year focusing on a genre I've come to love and one that I've found I can connect to on more than just a consumer level, grunge music. The style has always fascinated me and I find the topics of the music and the grunge lifestyle to be fascinating. I was determined to create a project that would not only help me learn ore about the genre, but to also allow me to learn more about the grunge era altogether.
What I Created:
My main goal this year is to write more songs, so I researched common messages in grunge and what defined the sound and used that knowledge to write and perform my own grunge style song. For art, I wrote lyrics, came up with the chords, and performed my final song. I will eventually be producing it and releasing it as well. In history, I annotated my lyrics and highlighted specific lines, adding comments that explained the messages in the lyrics and gave support through research as to why it could be considered a grunge song. Finally, for English I wanted to use more of the research I had done and also create a seperate piece since my other two subjects were based on my song. I ended up writing a letter to Kurt Cobain. I asked myself what I would tell him if I had a chance to talk to him. Using what I learned about his life and its tragic ending, I created a few paragraphs expressing my admiration for him, how he's inspired me and millions of others, and asking a few hard-hitting questions only he himself would be able to answer.
Contextualization in my project:
I showed contextualization in this project through compiling information on different bands, grunge style, where it came from, and what it was as a whole. I learned about who led in the movement and what the inspirations of grunge really were. My main goal was to take all the information I had gathered and put that into my song. Using common topics of grunge music and chords that are often used, I created my own grunge type song. I also gathered information about Kurt Cobain's life, the way society at the time had an impact on him, and more of his background to understand why he ended up the way he did and so that I could have strong contextual evidence in my letter to him.